What Is The Difference Between Autistic Traits & Character?

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Can autistic traits be seperated from ones character in a way that one can think of what the persons character is like without the traits? I ask because I was surprized to find adpects where I always thought were my rather unique character were autistic traits. What then is the real me underneath these traits? Is it possible to seperate the two aspects?
Any thoughts?

Yeah I was wondering this too.

And it's why I never want to be cured.

I'm happy with my personality.

You could split your personality traits into two categories:
1. things that fit autistic diagnostic criteria or stereotypical autistic behavior, and
2. everything else.


Well there are almost zero human behaviors that are totally unique. Even extremely rare stuff like savant skills and people suddenly being able to play the piano and speak foreign languages due to brain trauma are experienced by multiple people.


If you fit the current medical concept of autism (a pervasive neurological condition that is present from early on in life), there is no "real you" that is separate from that. Your personality and behavior can't be separate from your brain.

However, like everyone else, your personality is partially determined by your personal experiences, upbringing, and ethnic/cultural heritage, and those things are somewhat separate from autism (they're not totally separate because the way people treat you is partially a reaction to your autistic nature and also because autism might run in your family). So you could consider that stuff to be part of you that is separate from autism.

I don't think they can be accurately separated because autism affects or influences all aspects of a person's life.

I guess whatever falls short of clinical symptoms is character

The clinical symptoms can influence how a person matures. There are autistic people who are nice and there are autistic people who are mean. Autism affects everyone differently and nobody is a walking DSM-5. For example, I'm Level 2 ASD. I'm also hard working, kind, lead by example, and detail-oriented. Not everyone with autism is all or any of those things. So those examples of mine would be character traits, not autism traits. However, my autism and life experiences could very well have influenced me to develop those traits.

The very fact of one being autistic does not affect my impression of a person.

If a person with autism is nasty, the person is nasty.

If the person who is nasty is not autistic, the person still is nasty.

Exactly.

Thank you everyone for your replies.
It is me trying to determine who is me by trying to seperate me from me to do it I guess?

And yes. Though no one knowingly has been diagnosed as it is something which was not known about in the past, but I know if I am on the spectrum then my Mum is, and definately her Mum was as well (My grandmother who happened to spend half her life in a daze due to doctors medicating her to calm her nerves). My Grandmother used to do verbal stimming quietly to herself.

Traits, qualities, and attributes, are the things that collectively form our character.

Growing up with autism, everything we see, feel, hear, learn, do, (etc), is through the lens of being autistic. No matter how used to bright light I get, I've still lived my whole life being sensitive to light. Even if you suddenly game me a miracle cure that made me not sensitive to light, I've still got 40 years learned experience of being sensitive to light - being "cured" doesn't retroactively edit my past experiences and memories to make them so I now see everything through not-autism. I'd still have 40 years of autistic memories, autistic experience, and autistic learning processes. I'd have to re-learn all of my experience all over again, cos I'm no longer the same person that experienced all of those memories. I'd have to learn how to learn all over again, a stranger in my own mind. Just like someone born completely blind, now able to see after 30 years - they don't suddenly know what everything is visually, just cos they can see now - they still have to go back and learn all the stuff they weren't able to before.

I feel like the idea that you can separate the autism from the person, is an offshoot of the idea that autism can be "removed", "fixed", or otherwise "cured".

It is more me trying to make sense of myself, because I joined this site not knowing that I had autistic traits other then one trait which led me to join to ask a question. I thought I was somewhere inbetween. I assumed I knew what it was like from both sides of the fence, but the more I found out about autism and myself, the more aspects of my character I discovered were traits.
This had me ask "If they are autism traits, then who is the real me?" (This thinking came to me out of the shock in discovering aspects which I assumed were my unusually unique character were autistic traits and I did not know. I never knew until I joined this site!)
Now not knowing 100% for sure but it is likely I am on the spectrum, I started asking myself how an allistic person thinks, because where I was trying to find out how an autistic person thinks, only to discover I share many traits so I was reasoning to myself that I must be somewhere on the spectrum (?), then it occured to me that I am not so sure I actually know how an allistic NT actually thinks. It has all become so confusing!

NT, here...Based on my personal observations of my beloved husband's autistic traits, i am inclined to think that these cannot be separated from character...How much more important for the Aspie to accept his or her diagnosis...Only then, can he or she demand ACCEPTANCE by others...I ACCEPT my beloved husband with his strengths and weaknesses (limitations), in the same way that he accepts me, flaws and all...MUTUAL ACCEPTANCE is key...